So what’s all the fuss about touch (the tactile system)? According to Hemholtz (the famed 19th century German physician, physicist and philosopher, famous for his many contributions):
“….everything occurs on the skin.”
In Psyche, Volume 16, number 1, (Alberto Gallace, Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca and Charles Spence, Department of Experimental Psychology, Crossmodal Research Laboratory Oxford University) Touch and the Body, the introduction says :
“Traditionally, studies of the awareness of sensory information in humans have focused on visual awareness ….This is rather surprising when one considers that touch, the first sense to develop in the womb in humans, might be the matrix upon which the awareness of ourselves as individuals, separated from the external world, starts to form.”
Gallace and Spence state that an estimated 18% of our body mass is composed of skin and its tactile receptors. Their schema illustrates tactile’s complicated role in human perception and movement:
From the earliest moments of conception, touch plays preeminent role. In the first few days, the embryonic cells that eventually become a full body divide into three layers:
1. endoderm (inside layer) which develops eventually into the internal organs
2 mesoderm (middle layer) that forms muscles and bones
3. ectoderm (distal layer) becoming the skin and nervous system. The nervous system and skin come from the same layer and develop together before birth and into the first year of life.
Research has indicated that touch plays a crucial role in infant development and the formation of healthy social relationships. Tactile stimulation impacts nerve transmission, infant weight gain (especially in premies), response and performance, healthy immune response and sensory-motor integration.
The MNRI Tactile Integration program (which I teach as a member of the MNRI faculty )”… uses neuro-tactile techniques to stimulate different receptors in the skin, working to appropriately engage and integrate the tactile sensory system within the complete mind/body system. When the tactile system is integrated, the brain stem relaxes defensive reflexes and opens the entire system to an experience of safety in which emotion and behavioral regulation improves and healthy motor, communication, and cognitive development can proceed.”